Max Hit Points

Max Hit Points (Max HP) is a statistic found in all Castlevania games. It is an estimate of how much damage one can suffer before succumbing to death.

In the classic games, one's Max HP is a much more limited pool, and does not increase over the course of their journey. To make up for this, the games in question have a life system set in place. In the Metroidvania-style games, Max HP is increased each time the player character earns a Level Up or finds and makes use of Life Vessels, but in return, the life system is gone.

Sometimes, obtaining a higher value of maximum health, while still effective, may pale in comparison to improving one's defense in the facet of long-term survivability. This is seen to a greater extent in the harder difficulty settings that are present for some of the games, due to the fact that taking one hit inflicts a reasonably dangerous percentage of the character's maximum health at the time. Another reason for this is the fact that traps tend to do a fixed percentage of one's maximum health in damage. Therefore, as the character's HP maximum rises, so too does the damage they take from traps.